February 14, 2025: Valentine’s Day. 4:30am. 9:30am GMT. The tiny alarm clock next to my bedside begins beeping at me as I roll over and turn it off. It’s an hour before I normally get up for work even, and several hours before I’m normally up given a choice in the matter. I’ve already been awake for 15 minutes, but now I start to roll out of bed and turn my computer on. I’ve already got the page I want open pinned: the early bird ticket queue for Back to the Beginning, Ozzy Osbourne’s last ever concert.
It wasn’t the first time I’d bought tickets to see Ozzy. In 2019 I’d bought tickets to go see him in March 2020 with my two best friends at the time. COVID struck full-force a couple weeks before we were supposed to go. In 2022 I’d bought tickets to go see Ozzy overseas, in Dublin, Ireland; I was absolutely determined to get to see him. A month before my flight to Ireland for vacation, Ozzy cancels his tour, citing back injuries and an inability to continue touring. I was devastated.
I don’t really think of myself as being “born in the wrong generation,” but having distinctly older musical tastes can be frustrating at times. I grew up listening to Bob Seger, Grand Funk Railroad, Yes, Phil Collins. If you name a band that had a hit between the mid-1960s and 1980s there’s a pretty good chance I’d recognize them. Something about the older music just appealed to me a lot more than newer things. Mind you, that’s not to say that newer music is bad; it just never hit me the same way as some of the older music did.
As I grew into a teenager my tastes changed, but still stayed old; I found myself listening to 70s and 80s metal bands. Judas Priest, Dio, Accept, even Motley Crue (idk how to add umlauts here) all saw heavy rotation on my iPod Touch and later my iPhone 4s. I grew to love Motorhead, and found VH1 Classic on my TV, one of the few music-focused TV channels left, showing music videos, documentaries, and concerts, even if it had started to go the way of reality TV shows. In a time before I had proper internet access (I was stuck using cell data until 2020), it was the only consistent way I could discover “new” music I liked out here in the countryside. It’s how I found one of my favorite bands, Dream Theater.
At the head of it all, though, was Ozzy Osbourne. From goofy ads on TV to the music itself to even video games I enjoyed like Brutal Legend, Ozzy was at the forefront. He’s a founding figure of metal, the lead singer of Black Sabbath. His solo career in the 80s was the stuff of legends. He and his family had their own TV show, multiple of them in fact. He’s one of the most iconic figures in all of contemporary media, to the point people who’ve never heard a metal song in their life can often recognize him. So, so much of the music I grew up listening to and loving began with this man’s talents and expression that I don’t think I can properly explain how much he means to me.
However, there’s also that part of me that knew even in my teens I’d likely never get to see some of my favorite bands during their prime. That really came to light around 2015, when Lemmy Kilmister, the lead singer and bassist of Motorhead, passed away at the age of 70. I felt frustration and sadness that I’d never be able to see a lot of these acts play at all, and felt a sort of urgency to go see them, but I didn’t know anybody who was willing to go with me, an 18 year old nervous wreck of a kid, and didn’t even know how to start looking out for concerts in my area. My parents occasionally went to live music (once every 5 years or so), but they never really taught me how to seek it out. And despite being a pretty smart kid in school, I just never thought to check for band websites and tours and such.
And now here I sat, three years after my last attempt to see Ozzy, waiting for the queue to open. I’d already gotten over the feeling that I was never going to see Ozzy, and then I was notified by my friend that Back to the Beginning was happening in July 2025: a massive music festival with some of the biggest names in metal. Metallica, Mastodon, Slayer, and all headlined by Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, for one final appearance. I had already resolved to travel to Europe during that time frame for ESA 2025; I figured I’d just end a few days early and go see Ozzy as a detour, assuming I could get tickets.
That assumption turned out to be pretty wishful thinking, but I suspected that from the first time I had the thought.
The queue moved along steadily; despite being in the queue as early as my internet connection would allow (5:00am sharp), I was still over 15000 deep at the start. The internet’s not quite as fast when the servers you’re trying to reach are located across an entire ocean. So naturally, by the time I got to the front of the queue line, the only tickets left were $2000 USD backstage passes and VIP seats. I’d have been willing to pay $500 for a chance to get to see Ozzy, but not that much. And so, exhausted by the anticipation, slightly bitter at having an early bird chance and getting beaten to tickets regardless, and still needing to get ready for work that day, I shut down my computer. The next day I expected to go even more poorly, and it did. So I stopped thinking about it for a while; I haven’t really thought that much about Ozzy since then.
That’s part of why hearing of his death this afternoon kinda hit me like a truck. The man people were saying was on his death bed for years, supposedly kept alive from the leftover drugs of sex, drugs, and rock & roll of the 80s, had passed away, finally, after one last big performance not three weeks prior. It’s a fitting sendoff for a man who never seemed to stop loving what he did, even if he had to be wheeled out on stage and sit in a chair. Music was a massive part of my life growing up. In a lot of places, it was the primary form of entertainment for me, following in the form of tiny radios and iPods, and eventually phones and bluetooth speakers. And Ozzy was the progenitor of a lot of that music, directly or indirectly. I still find myself drifting back to Sabbath and Ozzy’s solo career, even years after metal stopped being the primary thing I listen to. Nowadays my music tastes are far more broad and varied, but I still find myself wanting to come home every now and then, and remember my roots.
Rest well, Ozzy Osbourne, you crazy motherfucker. You earned it.